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2004-01-22

I picked up a copy of a so-called rag known as the Athens Weekly News. It is a six-page, letter-size, black-and-white publication that costs one dollar. While I would be quite interested in reading it weekly, one dollar seems quite overpriced, and they have a subscription-only website (subscription price: $25) with no free material, which suggests there is little compelling material overall.

2004-01-11

What's the deal with this fancy hyphenation in the name "Athens-Clarke County"? Could the residents not decide what to name it? Did Athens get married but decide on hyphenation so it could keep its professional identity? Is it just cool to refer to both names?

Yes, Athens got married. The City of Athens and Clarke County became one flesh in January 1991. Happy thirteenth anniversary, guys! Seriously, that's what they did, except that their identities fully merged and there is no individual Mr. or Mrs. to speak of. (If there were, I assume that Athens, being named after a goddess, would be the Mrs., and she could use her hundreds of restaurants to cook for Clarke. Clarke would use his landfill to take out the trash.) Yes, this is like Gokou and Vegeta fusing to become a more powerful individual, except the fusion dance took over 24 years. The city and county, like many of their residents, were trying to be cool and trendy so they identified city-county consolidation as the "in"thing to do, although Columbus-Muscogee County beat them to it 20 years earlier.

The consolidation of these two local governments was total, meaning that any organization that bears the name Athens-Clarke should not be confused with the type of jointly operated services that may be found in other counties. For example, both the City of Macon (in Georgia) and the unincorporated areas of the county in which it lies, Bibb, are served by a single fire department, the Macon-Bibb County Fire Department. In this case, the department essentially belongs to Macon but Bibb County pays them to extend their services. So the joining of a city name with a county name could indicate a joint operation or a single operation, leading to the confusion that hyphens are cool.

The lack of hyphens can also be confusing. For instance, why does the sheriff's department call itself the Clarke County Sheriff's Office even though there is no such entity as Clarke County? I do not know, but I can only speculate that the sheriff wants to appear conservative and not wear hyphens. The courts changed their names, however: the State Court of Clarke County became the State Court of Athens-Clarke County, for example, and the Municipal Court of the City of Athens became the Municipal Court of Athens-Clarke County. The Clarke County School District did not hyphenate its name, but it was not part of the county government to begin with since it is a subdivision of the state, and the Athens-Clarke charter didn't mention the school system. The Athens city school system merged with the county school system in 1955, back when hyphens were barely beginning to creep into youth culture.

Athens-Clarke County is both a city and a county, so that totally blows your mind. It is common for people to write "not applicable" in the "city" blank of a legal document, then "Athens-Clarke" in the "county" blank. Yes, the "county" part of the nomenclature is dominant for some reason, maybe because it would sound stupid to say "City of Athens-Clarke County." (However, City Hall was not renamed County Hall.) What did this mean to anyone who lived in Clarke County but inside Winterville's or Bogart's city limits? Those governments wanted to keep their own cityhood, so they kept their previous incorporated territory and their relationships to the county stayed the same, even though the county also became a city.

One idea that was discussed to explain why some residents of the previously unincorporated areas of Clarke County resisted unification was that they might lose their identity. Yes, that's a big issue in Georgia's smallest county (in terms of land area), isn't it? Yes, that's exactly like, say, Britain taking over those six northern counties in Ireland and ruling them from across the Irish Sea. Imagine the dramatic symbolism in replacing the Clarke County flag with the Athens-Clarke County flag! I'm surprised that violence didn't break out.

What significance did the old Athens city limits have after consolidation? A lot, I tell you. They formed the basis of taxing districts. You didn't think hyphens were free, did you? The area inside the former city limits is designated the Urban Services District, and the area outside is called the General Services District. This actually means that the old rule about not firing a gun in the city limits now says not to fire a gun in the Urban Services District. There are no road signs showing where these boundaries are, though. The Solid Waste Department publishes a picture of what the USD looks like. (The boundary seems to go east along the North Athens Perimeter Highway from Jefferson Road, then south and southwest along the perimeter system from the interchange at its northeast corner, then north along the Middle Oconee River until it reaches the North Athens Perimeter Highway again, then east along the perimeter until it reaches Tallasee Road, then northwest along Tallassee until Quailwood Drive, then northeast along Quailwood until Whitehead Road, north along Whitehead until Jefferson Road, and finally southeast along Jefferson until that first point at its interchange with the Perimeter Highway.)

So what is "Athens" now that there is no such named city? It may only be a geographic name. Damn good geographic name.

2004-01-08

Athens is "eaten up" with coffee houses. (That's another way of saying that you can't swing around a dead cat in the air without hitting a coffee house.) To name a few, Athens has Blue Sky, Jittery Joe's Five Points, Jittery Joe's Eastside, Jittery Joe's Student Learning Center, Espresso Royale, Starbucks, Cups, Favorite, and so on. I'm calling them coffee houses because an Athens Banner-Herald article alerted me that it's so not cool to call them coffee shops, but I do so anyway. Cafe is also problematic since that could refer to a diner.

Coffee shops/houses are special because they have an "atmosphere," and that atmosphere is not lacking in Athens. Blue Sky even had two layers of atmosphere recently: they had the regular troposphere at street level, and in the basement there was a smokosphere with an air purifier (Smokeeter) to eat cigarette smoke, but the management decided to make it non-smoking and promote the dingy basement as a meeting room. Blue Sky, like other cafes or coffee houses, displays various kinds of artwork, usually in the form of a related collection for a certain period of time. Upstairs you may see colorful oil paintings priced for hundreds of dollars -- "I wonder what would happen if I splashed coffee on one while trying to navigate the cramped tables" -- and downstairs you'll see crazy stuff that they probably hope will get vandalized, like scores of identical figures painted different colors on each repetition (like a kindergarten Andy Warhol) or sculptures made of random odd items (like Claes Oldenburg on crack).

Atmosphere is expensive, however, and "gourmet" coffee demands a premium price anyway. If your only expectation of coffee is "hot, and a lot of it," go to a Waffle House (not the Waffle Shop or a wafe). If you want to know the name of the roast you're drinking, go to an atmospheric coffee house. The way I see it, if you drink your gourmet coffee in the coffee shop, the price is OK because you're renting atmosphere for half an hour or more. Considering that students like to pack coffee shops houses and study for hours on end, it is no wonder that coffee shops houses charge the price of a fast food meal for a cup of coffee. If you want to eat a snack with your coffee, you'll have to cough up another two or three bucks. Do you want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Blue Sky has them for $2.25. McDonald's has hamburgers for 89 cents, but I don't suppose they really have atmosphere.

Espresso Royale Cafe (known as ERC to those of us in the know) deserves special mention because they recently put the smack down on the high gourmet coffee prices, making a small cup of coffee -- gourmet coffee -- available for 86 cents (including tax). If the ERC was the U. S. of A., then the other coffee houses' high-price menu boards would have boots in their a**es* (assuming menus have a**es). ERC's downside is that their seating area is designed for unnaturally small people (or perhaps children). ERC can claim Athens' only smoking section in a coffee house, but it is a small, dirty room accessible from the outside of the building. ERC also has a new outdoor sign that no one likes. But if I want coffee to go, or if I want to find philosophy instructors, then I'm going to ERC.

Let's mention a couple other unique places. Starbucks downtown has an upstairs seating area where you can feel superior and look down upon pedestrians, cars, and the Arch. So Starbucks would be an excellent place for cats. Cups is a neat place on the east side; it has the appearance of a store because on the wall it has framed posters for sale and there are all kinds of merchandise sitting around trying to entice you.

So much, then, about coffee houses in Athens. * I apologize for the use of the word a**, but this is a random, out-of-place cultural reference to Toby Keith. Sorry that I couldn't restrain myself. Please carry on.

2004-01-06

Dearing Street and its neighborhood have narrow streets with sharp stone curbs. There is a good bit of street parking allowed but not sufficient room, so drivers must negotiate with oncoming traffic. Of course, it's a residential area, and quite attractive, too. The houses are stylish and old with an ample canopy of large hardwood trees. I've read the suggestion that one should take a walk and not just drive along Milledge Avenue; I would extend that suggestion to Dearing Street, which is much quieter.

2004-01-04

One late afternoon last year, while working downtown, I parked my car on Hancock Avenue at City Hall. When I returned half an hour or more later, I found I had left my keys in the ignition. Since I have an anti-lockout feature, the door was left unlocked, too. I was glad to find nothing stolen (like the car) since that was practically an open invitation in the light of things that happen downtown, such as the time one guy left his car overnight and found it turned over upside on its roof later.